Daphne, over at Daphne's Dandelions (Harvest Monday), commented on how plain her meals are. She tries for a green and an orange with each dinner. Well, Daphne, you are not alone. We have been eating very plain evening meals, usually consisting of grilled chicken or fish, with something green and something orange or red, and a salad. I looked at our dinner plates tonight, and thought "that could be served to Daphne!"

We're still eating green beans from the freezer, and butternut squash from the garage storage spot.

The winter squash is still as fresh tasting and delicious as it was last fall, and I haven't seen any spoilage on them at all. It looks as though we won't have any problem consuming all 100+ pounds that I grew in 2012. I have several bags of summer squash and zucchini in the freezer. We just don't eat those very often, and much prefer them fresh.

I still have one fall cabbage left. The little Gonzales cabbages stored well in the refrigerator, and will be grown again in 2013 for winter meals as well as sauerkraut. Mr. Granny, daughter Amy and granddaughter Alicia all loved the sauerkraut, which wasn't quite as sour as some they had eaten.

The best beans from the freezer have been Fortex. They taste just as good as they did fresh.

The pickled beets are all gone, so I really need to grow and can more this year.

We've both been cutting way back on sweets, so hardly any of the jams have been eaten. I have a feeling many jars will be given to the kids.

We've hardly made a dent in the pickle relish, so none will be canned this year.

I ran out of canned tomatoes long ago, but still have a good supply of sauce, ketchup and sweet chili sauce. I'd like to make more tomato juice this year, but without lemon juice. I'm hoping by adding citric acid instead, it won't have that sour off-taste.

Now....on to something thought was really cute. Granddaughter Alicyn (age 4) heard the story of The Three Little Pigs yesterday, and today she recited it for the camera. I think the girl is going to be an actress!

Alicyn recites The Three Little Pigs

I might be just a bit prejudiced, but I think that's pretty darned good for a four year old who just heard the story once!

Amy, Alicia and Alicyn stopped by with a lively orchid plant and birthday cupcakes.

They couldn't get 74 candles on the cupcake, so I settled for 1.

If you had gone 59 days without a dessert (I've lost 12 pounds!), you'd be grinning like a Cheshire Cat at the thoughts of sinking your teeth into a luscious lemon cupcake too!

The girls brought me an orchid plant! I've never grown one before, so it will be a learning experience for me. I've never met a houseplant I couldn't kill :-0

Mr. Granny was manning the camera. We were trying to give him instructions, and he wasn't doing a very good job of following them! More than once he got me laughing at his attempts, but we did get a few decent photos out of him. I won't say how many pictures he got of his finger. It definitely made for a happy birthday!

Granddaughter comes to visit just in time to help shell the Fortex bean seeds.

She has learned to sort the good seeds from the bad.

Her cup runneth over!

Almost finished.

Between the two of us, we ended up with almost four ounces of seeds,

plenty for the 2013 garden!

A seed inventory was then made, with most of the old seeds disposed of. All of the "good" seeds that have been inventoried are in the red boxes, the others are still waiting to be done. It doesn't look like many seeds, but about 55 packets are on the inventory list, counting the order that has been placed and should be here this week.